Badger cull. What’s next?
The badger cull has been delayed, and MPs including Crawley’s Henry Smith voted massively in favour of killing it completely. So what will happen next? The government plans on going ahead with it anyway – so much for democracy!
But at least we now have time to talk about this issue without the pressure of an imminent cull. And talk is what we need to do – farmers, government and wildlife groups need to get out of their trenches and talk.
Because the real enemy is bovine TB. It’s a killer, and it must be stopped because farmers and cattle are suffering appallingly.
The recent debate has boiled down to whether killing thousands of badgers to reduce the disease by 16% is good enough. But there are other issues we should be focussing on – better biosecurity measures on farms, tighter cattle movement controls and a TB vaccine for cattle are all viable options, despite what the government says.
Let us focus on those. Let’s not resort to killing animals ‘because it’s worth a try’. Combining forces to focus time, money and energy to find a solution that will actually work is ‘worth a try’, and Care for the Wild are committed to doing just that.
Philip Mansbridge
Care for the Wild, Horsham
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Weather for Crawley
Sunday 19 May 2013
Today
Cloudy
Temperature: 10 C to 18 C
Wind Speed: 13 mph
Wind direction: North east
Tomorrow
Light rain
Temperature: 12 C to 17 C
Wind Speed: 14 mph
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